Tom Colicchio Fights For Americans' Food Rights

Tom Colicchio has been taking on Capitol Hill when it comes to food concerns for many years now, lobbying for stricter farming regulations and fighting against hunger concerns.

The Top Chef and celebrity chef has a major concern involving genetically modified organisms in our nations’ food and is speaking out about the importance of demanding labeling from our government.

”It’s not surprising that as a chef, I want to know what I am feeding my customers. It’s also not surprising that as a father, I want to know what I am feeding my family,” he writes on the New York Daily News' website. “What is surprising is that some in Congress are working so hard to keep consumers like me in the dark as to what’s in the food we eat.”

Tom’s investment in the issue runs so deep that he actually co-founded and became a board member of the Food Policy Action, an organization that grades members of Congress based on their votes that effect food and farming. He’s speaking out now because there’s an important vote in the coming week that could potentially limit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s ability to develop a national GMO labeling system and could also block states from enabling labeling laws, something Tom fiercely opposes.

"We can debate the benefits of tinkering with the DNA of the plants and animals we eat, but there is simply no downside to allowing consumers to know what’s in the food they purchase via a value-neutral disclosure on the back of food packaging,” he writes.

"Congress should be leading efforts to give consumers more information about what’s in their food and how it’s grown, not less,” he continues. “And if the federal government won’t give consumers the information they want through a national GMO-labeling standard, they should at least allow states to fill the void. We should not keep American consumers in the dark.”